The Hat

She said

How do you like my hat?

It was a catastrophe

but I couldn’t tell her that.

I said

It’s perfect.  It’s so you.

I especially love the tartan trim

the fuzzy little lamb grazing on the brim.

She beamed

as I knew she would.

Sometimes a lie is best

when the truth is not so  good.

Her hat in fact looked like

a three story house with lots

of windows but no floor boards.

She was just a kid with room

to grow and had been

working on her hat for hours.

With needle and thread

she tacked little straw flowers

In places where real flowers

never could grow.

They were all in a row

and in between

she filled up the spaces

with faces of people

she never would know.

It was an act of contrition, that hat

looking very much like a Picasso.

An abstract confession of other people’s sins

she was too young to have any of her own.

Cubism gone astray, you might say

accidently bumping into Claude Monet.

And, judging by those people

dancing on the roof

cavorting with Chagall along the way.

It grew on me

and so much so

my lie became the truth.

Day by day her hat

spoke to me in Tongues

as she kept working

adding flying buttresses, French doors

a balcony with a railing

a velvet ladder with golden rungs

so you could climb to the top

and see in the distance

a sunset, an ocean

a ship sailing.

by Leo